Vicious groupthink rejoicing at death of climate ‘heretic’
The other day, when a genial ex-professor of geology was suddenly struck down by cancer in Australia at the age of 74, a very odd thing happened. Across the blogs and the Twittersphere, people rushed to rejoice at his death as if it were some great victory. Using startlingly vile language, one exulted in the hope that this good-humoured and lovable man would be feeling “the warmth now you’re in hell”. Bob Carter’s crime, in the eyes of that frenzied mob, was that he was an outspoken “climate denier”.
A decade or more back, as an expert on how the Earth’s climate had changed through geological aeons, he spent three years examining all the scientific evidence for whether human activity was now having an unprecedented effect on our climate. Having eventually concluded that it wasn’t, he spent the rest of his life arguing in a measured way that official science had taken a serious wrong turning, and that this was leading to some very foolish and dangerous political consequences that would one day be looked back on with astonishment.
What was interesting about the hysterical exulting at Carter’s death was that it showed how far the belief in man-made global warming has become yet another classic example of that phenomenon so well analysed by the American psychologist Irving Janis as “groupthink”. The defining characteristics of those caught up in a bubble of groupthink are that, first, they no longer think for themselves but become absorbed into a collective mindset; and, second, they show irrational fury towards anyone failing to share their belief system.
That is why it is impossible to have any rational dialogue with victims of groupthink. They cover up the fact that they do not really understand the basis for their beliefs by reacting with vehement intolerance to any “heretic” who dares question them.
Nothing could better have illustrated this than those vicious whoops of delight which greeted the death of a good man, much missed by all who knew him.